Giant Rock

This is Giant Rock in the Mojave desert, California, which is (wait for it)… the largest free-standing rock in the world.

Er, right.

But wait, there’s more! George Van Tassel (the dude that built the Integratron) carved a small room into the bottom of the rock, where he carried out weekly meditation sessions to communicate with space people.

Okaaay.

I wonder if the hole in it had anything to do with the rock splitting into two pieces in February 2000? You can see the gleaming white interior of the piece that fell off of it in our thumbnail, and here are before and after shots.

He was awoken by a man in a one-piece blue suit standing beside his bed who said “My name is Sylvanon, I’d be pleased to show you my craft”. He tried to wake his wife but was unable to do so. The ship was standing about a hundred yards away, and on being taken aboard found it was very like the one in the film The Day the Earth Stood Still

Who gave that George fella the right to go around taking huges lumps out of the ‘worlds largest free standing rock’?
I’m sure if i turned up at Ayres Rock (or Oolawoora or whatever its called) and wanted to put a hot dog stand in a big hole in the side some one would have something to say about it!

Can someone explain what that ‘town’ is all about? They just seem to be randomly placed houses surrounded by an arbitrarily selected bit of scrubland, scattered all over the place with no centre or infrastructure!
Is this common in these parts?

Ayer’s Rock is not really a free standing rock. Uluru (Ayers Rock) is one of Australia’s most famous landmarks and is the country’s most visited site. The mysterious red monolith is the weathered peak of a buried mountain range and rises some 430 metres from the desert and has a perimeter of about 9km (5.5 miles). The red colour of Uluru is due to iron minerals in the surface rocks oxidising with the air.

Your information on Giant Rock is incredibly erroneous. George Van Tassel did not build the house – which was UNDER the rock, not carved out of it (I’ve been in it, though the BLM filled it in after George’s death in the mid-1970s). A man name Frank Critzer, a prospector of German origins (but an American), built it, and lived out there until WW II, when he was suspected of being a German spy because he had – a radio! Never mind that the radio was a gift from his friends who did the Amos and Andy show, and it could only receive – that was cause enough for one good citizen to drag out the Riverside County Sheriff’s Dept. (wrong county). Critzer was suspected of stealing dynamite in connection to his vile terroristic plans (of which there is no evidence), but when the deputies began questioning him, Critzer pointed out that they were in the wrong county, and he went back down into the house.
Well, cops being cops, that ticked them off no end, so while the “cop version,” states that Critzer had a bomb and blew himself up, those who knew him knew that it was much more likely that the tear gas grenade the cops fired into his house landed in the box of blasting caps and dynamite that Critzer had under his kitchen table. In any event, Critzer got himself blown up.
Van Tassel had known Critzer and had visited Giant Rock while he was living there. A few years after the explosive incident, Van Tassel took his family to live under the rock. His wife made apple pies that were good enough for the Hollywood set to fly out to the dry lake bed for, and George fixed planes that needed help.
Then came the Venutians, with the technological revelations necessary for George to build his Integratron, a structure designed to rejuvinate cellular structure to keep you young forever. Unfortunately, the Venutians provided no venture capital, and Van Tassel died of old age (or was assassinated by the government) before it was completed (though it stands today and is used for sound baths and tours, etc.).
Van Tassel used to host UFO conventions on the dry lake bed next to Giant Rock that drew upwards of 15,000 people. I met him in 1972, and he died shortly thereafter.
Landers, by the way, was started by a doctor and his buddies who all got 5-acre plots of land and made a landing strip for their planes there, using the place as a getaway from the city. Goat Mountain is home to several mines, none of which look particularly safe to go down into to explore.
Landers is not an incorporated town, it is really just an area, but hardly a ghost town. It is a growing area (the housing boom in Southern California is hitting this area hard). One of the reasons you see scattered homes and cabins about is that the BLM was raffling off 5-acre “jackrabbit” homesteads back in the 1950s and 60s. For $100 you got the land, but you had to build a 400 square foot cabin on it to keep it. Many cabins still stand today.
Oh, the Los Padres Mine is too far north to have anything to do with Landers (which didn’t exist until the 1950s anyway). But we’ve got lots of mining activity in the area.

shanghahi brown is correct.i had the honor of meeting george when i was a kid, and the place was amazing. i was crushed when i found out what people have done to the place after george died. what a waste.

I Lived near the Dome for all of my high school years, I also went to school with George’s grandchildren, Shanghahi Brown pretty much hit the story right on the nose. I work for Mrs. Landers, and knew the Lynn Twinns, as well as many others that were instrumental to the history there. I was fascinated with it. It does sadden me when I see all that has happend anfter thier deaths.

ye know dan boon was marryed to sandra my cousin they lived at the rock during my child hood ,I was there for the conventions in the 50’s I would like to know where I could get the footage from those conventions seeing that I am in some of it history channel has some footage of me but can not find it do not remember the name of the show ,does any one know where I can get this on DVD please post a reply if you know thank you !!!!!!

His room was UNDER the rock. The Feds filled it in or blew it up – the vandals!

I visited the empty room after Van Tassel no longer lived there. It was about 14 steps down. You can still see where the walkway to the door leads – it has become a fireplace for campers. This is on the opposite side of the rock where the break happened. That was caused by campers building fires under the overhang for many years.

It makes me sad when I find that people dont look further than the end of their nose before posting opinions and conclusions lol…..Alex!! 😀

When it comes to somehow blaming the splitting of the boulder on the room that was under the boulder and that supposedely Van Tassel built the room……it really shows the giant lack of knowledge the original poster has on this subject. The first thing the origniator of this post should have thought about if they knew anything remotely close to the true history of this, is if the boulder splitting was caused by the explosion of dynamite that the cops caused by throwing a smoke bomb to scare out Frank Critzer or whether or not it was due to the activities of the government who repossessed the land and filled in the room with bulldozers after Van Tassel passed away and the lease on the land ran out.

Also, if someone really cared about the true history of Van Tassel, The Integratron or Giant Rock, they probably would have at least read the available history that is online before posting.
http://integratron.com/2History/History.html
Cool post anyways, its always nice to see different people revealing what they’ve seen.

If anyone has any more information on the history of The Integratron and Van Tassel either through relation or through experiences that aren’t published, please contact me [email protected]
😀
Me and a few of my friends are wanting to do a respectull and true documentary regarding Van Tassel and his experiences and influences.

My father’s cousin flew myself, my father, and my brother to the Giant Rock Airport in the 60’s, when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I seem to recall him saying that the military had once hit the rock with an artillery shell, although I don’t recall why they may have done this, and him pointing out the slight impact mark made by the projectile. I also remember him pointing out the actual shell casing being used as part of a “decorative” border around some plants or a cactus garden or something near the diner that was there at the time. Anybody know anything about this? Would be very interested to hear from anyone who could verify this.

My family had a cabin outside 29Palms in the 50s until about 1976. My family are all pilots and can remember flying into Giant Rock almost every weekend for lunch. Are place was next to Frick field which is still there, changed alot but not sure who owns it now. Few weeks ago Giant Rock popped into my head. Started telling my freind about it, like it was some old childhood dream. Decided to look it up on the web, am amazed at the amount of info but can not beleive that someone or the government did not preserve the space under the rock. I was thinking this (apartment) I always called it, was just something cool to a young kid, but lots of stories I have read describe it the same. Too Bad! Would have liked to see it again. Going to fly in and see it but afraid am going to be really disappointed. Keep the stories coming.

For the curious, this link is to what might be the only available photo of the room under Giant Rock, scanned from a 1950s magazine published by Gabriel Green, one of George Van Tassel’s friends and fellow contactees.

In my comment dated 5/25/08 I mention that my father’s cousin claimed that Giant Rock was hit by an artillery shell sometime prior to my visit there in ’67 or ’68 (probably somebody from the nearby Marine base decided it would make for good target practice). It just occurred to me that maybe this had something to do with the Rock splitting. Any comments/insight?

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